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The C4 Composer/Choral Collective will be performing Opperman’s mini-operetta “Tales from the Bizarro World” under the direction of Benjamin Arendsen in New York City on Thursday, March 7th at The Church of St. Luke and Saturday, March 10th at Baruch College along with pieces by his friends Martha Sullivan and Colin Britt. The theme of the concerts is “The music of the strange, the absurd, and the surreal. Tickets are available from the C4 website at www.c4ensemble.org! $20

On Thursday, April 26th the Berklee College of Music Symphonic Winds will be giving the world premiere performance of Chris Opperman’s new tone poem “Kagemusha” about the Akira Kurosawa samurai film of the same name along with pieces by Patrick Burns, Jack Stamp, Eric Whitacre, and Frank Ticheli.

Chris Opperman’s latest release, Studio House, is now available for pre-order. The EP features three new Opperman originals: “Benmont,” “The Heart of Gold,” and “Milliways,” as well as a recording of Frank Zappa’s piece “Blessed Relief” and Carla Bley’s “Útviklingssang.” The album features Chris Opperman on Fender Rhodes/keyboards, Eric Seiz on electric guitar, Timothy Hayward on alto saxophone, Jordan Shapiro on mandolin and electric mandolin, Jeff Little on bass guitar, Elizabeth Cary on violin and cello, Raymond Carega, Max King, and legendary progressive rock drummer Marco Minnemann on drum set. The EP was produced by Chris Opperman and recorded, mixed, and mastered by Grammy-award winning engineer Neil Citron. Also features original crocheted animals/photography by Inga Wohlgemuth and graphic design by Louis Lagonik.

There are three pre-ordering options available. $5 for CD quality audio files, $7.50 for a physical copy (includes U.S. shipping), and $10 for an autographed copy. All pre-ordering options include the CD quality audio files. <– I’ll have to make you links for these.

On Saturday, we had an afternoon session to start getting the cello parts added to the basic tracks for the Special Opps studio album. It was a fairly relaxed session since we experienced some delays due to hard drive issues at the beginning of it. So Jen used that time to practice and I used that time to relax (which was great since I had a pretty hectic week). Since we did several tracks of cello, we only worked on two songs, Beware of the Random Factor andTelepathy on Mars? and we had a real nice time. It’s so great hearing these arrangements finally really come to life in the studio. Jen’s a monster player and being the veteran in the band, I’m really grateful that she’s lended her talents to my music for so long.

It looks like we’re going to have to wait awhile to get into the studio again, but that will actually be a blessing because it will give me some time to focus on other things like getting the live album out (We finished the artwork tonight!) and

Produced by Chris, the album was beautifully recorded, mixed and mastered by Grammy-award winning engineer Neil Citron.

The stunning artwork was created by Eisner-award winning comic book artists Mark Buckingham (Fables, The sandman, Miracleman) and D’Isreali (The Sandman) with additional graphic design by Jessica Marini.